Sunday, April 11, 2010

Is it unions that prevent bad teachers from getting fired?

In Georgia, where 92.5% of the teachers are non-union, only 0.5% of tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired. In South Carolina, where 100% of the teachers are non-union, it’s 0.32%. And in North Carolina, where 97.7% are non-union, a miniscule .03% of tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired—the exact same percentage as California.

An even more startling comparison: In California, with its “powerful” teachers’ union, school administrators fire, on average, 6.91% of its probationary teachers. In non-union North Carolina, that figure is only 1.38%. California is actually tougher on prospective candidates....

Fact: Oregon has a good public school system. So do South Dakota, Vermont, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine and Washington, among others. Is that because the folks living in these states are exceptionally bright? Is it because their teachers are extraordinarily talented? Or is it because these school districts are stable, relatively homogeneous, and don’t face a fraction of the challenges facing California?

For the record, the teachers in these aforementioned good schools are overwhelmingly unionized. Oregon and Washington teachers are 100% unionized; Wisconsin is 98%; Connecticut is 98%; etc.

I found this after hearing a similar assertion by Randi Weingarten on a recent episode of HBOs "Real Time with Bill Maher." Perhaps there is more persuasive counterpoint out there than I found on this anti teachers' union site.

Posted at 01:40:31 PM

Comments

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No, it isn't. Currently, most unions are so weak as to be non-existent anyway. Look at the miners -- as some commentator I heard this week pointed out, it used to be that unions were the strong arm against unsafe practices. Looking at the list of violations in that Massey mine, there's clearly no strong arm against them.

Bad teachers, unionized or not, tenured or not, can be fired. It may take some effort, some paperwork, observations and follow-ups but it is nowhere near impossible or even all that difficult.

As a parent I've also found that there are teachers most everyone agrees are good to great, others bad to awful (and in need of a non-overworked and/or lazy administrator to get rid of them) and the most interesting subset -- the teachers that some parents absolutely adore and others loath. Those seem to me to be the ones that should be hardest to fire, or to at least retain until one can determine exactly why they are so hated and loved simultaneously!

The big myth is the one being perpetuated, by some, that tenure gives you a free pass for life. It doesn't. It is not surprising to me the numbers comparing non-union and union teachers are so similar. What many don't realize is many teachers are let go before they attain tenure, in Illinois that's four years. They are not fired, they're told their contracts won't be renewed after the current school term. And many whom can't handle the job usually quit after the first year.

The problem with teacher evaluations is they're not followed according to set procedures by the administration, in my district many administrators skip evaluations altogether. Action cannot be taken against any teacher without a proper evaluation. If the administrator is not doing his/her job, how is it the teachers', or the unions, fault when poor staff are allowed to remain? How many times have any of you heard of an administrator being fired? Though they're non-union, it never happens. The administrators also run the schools, set up the curriculum, decide the make-up and staffing of the classrooms, handle the discipline, or lack of, in the school. All of these things are out of control of the teachers, yet they're to blame for failing schools and disintegrating social behaviors?

And like Macary points out, look at where these failing schools are located. I'll bet 90% of them are located in districts where there is high poverty, a greater proportion of single or foster parenting, high minority, high crime (including gang activity), low student attendance, and less funding per student. Is it possible these schools are failing due to some of these environmental conditions? Ya think??? Is that also the fault of the teachers?

No, in my opinion the state and local governments have failed, and they're choosing to punish the teachers and the students in this state rather than accept responsibility.

What unions do, if nothing else, is make sure that management follows both the law and contract rules when disciplining/firing a worker. Without a union, an individual worker may not have the legal knowledge or wherewithal to make sure that management has followed protocols when administering discipline.

While this is true for teachers, it is even more true in unskilled industries (where many of the workers are minimally educated.)

This is slightly off topic, but I want to know why K-12 teachers get tenure? I can't figure out why tenure is a net positive in this industry. I can make a case both for and against it at University level where we desire academic freedom (disclosure: I am a college professor), but I don't see any argument why tenure makes sense at K-12.

I'd argue that at the high school level tenure is also about academic freedom. At the elementary level, likely not so much.

It is at the least a hedge against your stated opinions being held against you. And by opinions, I mean opinions about how the school and/or district is run, how well the curriculum is set-up, followed, how well resources are allocated, etc.

Unions or tenure cannot be what prevents bad teachers from being fired. To fire someone for being bad you first have to know what bad is, an evaluation that is impossible without answers to a lot of hard questions, answers that I don’t think we have although many act as if we do. Who is the teacher’s customer? The student? The parents? The community? What is the added value of the teaching? To keep the kids out of trouble until they grow up? To achieve proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic? To impart knowledge that allows them to understand what intuitively they would not otherwise understand? To prepare them for further education? To prepare them for productive life? To maximize their future income? To maximize their future happiness? How are these things to be measured? How does one know how much a difference a teacher made vs. the genetics and the culture of the children she was in charge of educating?

What a hodgepodge of dubious statistics. Saying that there are good schools in unionized states doesn't mean much other than it is possible to have a good unionized school. I should hope so! It's the places like DC, New York, California, Chicago where the unions are an impediment to the education that children deserve.

The fact that California weeds out one in 19 teachers doesn't counter the fact that once they have tenure, they are there forever.

Jen, I am sorry, but it is near impossible to fire a teacher in many places. Read about what Los Angeles has to go through just to try to dismiss a teacher. Effort and paperwork--yeah, years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the teacher might still be retained. Read about the rubber rooms in New York and what the people in them have done. These are facts. School administrators don't just make this up. I have never understood why unions are so wedded to retaining bad people. That's not my idea of a profession.

The comparison with the miners is not apt. The miners' union is not strong. That's how things sometimes work in the real world, where there are two sides in contention. Unlike the teachers, the miners can't sway the coal companieswith donations and votes. Look at Illinois. Jellyfish Governor Quinn mentioned that he might look into reforming teacher pensions. The busloads of teachers showed up in Springfield and he folded like a cheap suitcase.

I have said it before and I'll say it again: Teacher's pensions are not like a pension someone in the public sector might get, nor are they like our 401Ks, exactly. For one thing, teachers pay into their pensions, have paid into it for years while the state reneged. Also, THIS IS THEIR "SOCIAL SECURITY"! That's right, they don't pay into Soc Sec, and so this is all they get. The average pension for the state of IL is around $18,000 per year (I may be mistaken, it may have read $28,000 - hardly a magnificent amount, in any event). As far as I'm concerned, teachers who teach for 30 years, having to deal with what they do now, deserve what they get - especially since they have contributed into it with the expectation that they will have SOMETHING to live on after they retire. And I completely understand why they might want to keep what they've got.

Let's not mix up the people with the 30 years and the average pension. The average includes people who might have worked just a few years: in other words, meaningless. A teacher with a normal lifespan may easily collect $1 million in pension. Guaranteed. A teacher retiring at an $80,000 will start at a pension of $54,000--what a lot of Illinois taxpayers call an OK salary. With the absurd 3 percent annual increase built in, a teacher living to 85 will collect $2.5 million. What precisely do they "pay in"? Nothing near what is paid out. Many will collect what they paid in during the first 2 to 4 years of retirement. I continue to ask why I have to fund most of my own retirement as well as that for teachers and government workers. And how can this pyramid scheme hold up? It is going to swallow the state.
I wish I could get out of Social security--into which I pay 7 percent of my salary--and get the teachers' deal: Retire at 58 instead of 67.

Wendy what have I mixed up? I just laid out some math. No matter how you slice it, they are "structured" so that the taxpayer is fund ing most of a generous, guaranteed retirement. Is it some big deal that teachers actually pay something for their retirement? Better than nothing, I guess, but of little consolation to me. Teachers contribute 8% of pay to pension. That's 1.8 percentage points higher than what other taxpayers pay into social security. Allow for return on investment, and teachers fund about 15% of the pension amount they receive.

qoutidian, you are dead wrong about paying 7% of salary into SS. You actually pay 14%, including the 7% charged to you employer but that otherwise go to you. (My employer on my benefits statement certainly claims that the money is paid for my benefit, which is a hoot.)

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